


Puzzle Pieces

by Nobodyknowstrouble



Series: What went unseen [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Voldemort's disappearance, Baby Harry Potter, Gen, Godric's Hollow, Hurt No Comfort, POV Sirius Black, Post-Voldemort's Halloween 1981 Attack on the Potter Family (Harry Potter), Pre-Sirius Black in Azkaban, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew Confrontation, Voldemort's Halloween 1981 Attack on the Potter Family (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:22:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29073264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nobodyknowstrouble/pseuds/Nobodyknowstrouble
Summary: Halloween 1981 and the following confrontation with Peter Pettigrew.Or, how Sirius Black's world fell apart.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & James Potter, Sirius Black & Lily Evans Potter
Series: What went unseen [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2133120
Kudos: 3





	Puzzle Pieces

_ 31.10.1981  
_ _11:13 pm_

  
Sirius paced around his living room. Well not _his_ living room exactly, but the one of the cottage the order of the phoenix had offered as a hideout.

He was restless. It felt like having an itch but being unable to scratch it. A thought was just outside his reach. The last piece to a puzzle, Sirius didn’t even know he was solving. Like splinters little pieces of memories flitted across his head and he knew something in there was wrong but he didn’t know what.

Frustrated he put on his jacket and left his hideout.

He wasn’t supposed to leave it, except for when he took care of his responsibilities and in emergencies but he couldn’t help it.

He would go to visit Peter, no matter that he had only recently visited him already. He would talk to him and then everything would be fine – whatever it was. He just knew Peter had the answer.

* * *

_0 1.11.1981_   
_12:11 am _

  
Peter’s hideout was a flat in Muggle-London. Dumbledore himself had set the wards and protective spells around it – even though he of course thought the place was supposed to hide Sirius.

The spells Dumbledore did were almost undetectable. No ordinary witch or wizard could tell that any kind of magic at all was in the works and it was near impossible to find out what exactly was done.

For everyone who didn’t know better it seemed like a random muggle flat.

Of course there weren’t a lot of people who could even contemplate all this. The wards around the flat were so strong that most people simply didn’t notice its existence.

That was the main protection around the flat – inconspicuousness. The wards were strong but nobody knew if Voldemort couldn’t still break them. It was better if nobody thought the flat to be important enough to try.

Sirius and Peter were the only ones exempt from the wards and therefore could enter it. It was a good thing that the plan included for the secret keeper to never leave the flat – if Peter hadn’t been included, to bring Sirius food, he now wouldn’t have a hideout. Or worse, they would have had to tell someone about the switch.

It seemed to be a good plan. A safe plan. And there really was one undeniably good thing about it – when Sirius opened the familiar front door and found the flat deserted, he didn’t waste time with any delusions and false hopes about Peter just being out for a walk.

A flood of adrenaline crashed over Sirius and without thinking he pulled out his wand. He wanted to panic and run to Dumbledore and Lily and James tell them that Peter was abducted but he forced himself to stay calm. Because there was still some false hope and he had to see if maybe he was wrong and Peter was just asleep in his bedroom.

Sirius felt like this should have been his first conclusion. Instead of _he’s gone_ he should have thought _he’s asleep_.

Even though he knew he wasn’t, because from the second he had laid eyes on the flat he had immediately known it was completely deserted, and Sirius couldn’t process why he knew that but he just knew, knew that Peter wasn’t in a different room, he was gone.

Still, he searched the flat. Searched the small bedroom with the small skylight right over where the bed stood. Even searched the empty closet in the corner. 

He searched the bathroom and even looked behind the shower curtain because false hope was a fucking bastard.   
He searched the small broom cupboard.  
He even looked under the kitchen table for merlin’s sake.

But it was fruitless. It took him barely a minute until he had checked every empty room and was back in the living room again.

He took a deep breath to think about where he should go first when it finally registered with him. What he had subconsciously picked up the moment he entered.

The flat looked completely deserted and empty because it  _was_. Because it looked like it was new.

There weren’t any photographs on the walls, no fruits on the kitchen table, no abandoned newspaper somewhere lying around, no cloak and shoes next to the door and no bundled up blanket on the couch – the picture of a lived in flat Sirius had seen upon his last visit. Everything was gone.

It seemed like Peter had simply moved out and nothing indicated that there had been a fight.   
Sirius breath hitched.

_ Nothing indicated there had been a fight. _

So Peter had left voluntarily. Death Eaters weren’t exactly known to tidy up crime scenes after all. In the contrary, their main weapon was spreading fear. If anything they would’ve messed the flat up on purpose after the fact.

To Sirius horror it suddenly felt like the last piece to a puzzle fell into place.

_ Peter had left voluntarily. _

Sirius hadn’t ever considered it. Not for one second had he doubted Peter’s loyalty. But now that he did, he finally saw how much sense it made. Sirius felt like throwing up.

The memory shreds that had haunted him the whole evening, the small things he had noticed, without even knowing he did, everything connected into a clear picture.

Peter, who had been unusually nervous.  
Peter who was the one – the only one – who had ever told them about Remus ‚suspicious behaviour’.

And finally, the reason Sirius had started to feel so restless.

Peter who told him he had seen Remus thelast night he stood guard in Knockturn Alley, even though he should be out on a mission. 

He hadn’t thought about  when  Peter had stood guard, had only fretted about the question why Remus had been away from the werewolf camps. But now the date ran screeching through his head.

It had been the last time Peter had done something for the order before going into hiding and it had been the night of the 13th October.

Sirius head started spinning. Now he finally saw what was wrong. How could he be so stupid? How hadn’t he noticed? He had spent the whole night as a dog out of pure habit!

And, like that hadn’t been enough he thought of Harry. Hadn’t Dumbledore always talked about the infallible instincts of children? And hadn’t they teased Peter regularly with the fact that Harry couldn’t stand being near him? That he started crying the moment Peter approached him?

Sirius would have apparated on the spot, had he been able to. He had already started turning, before he noticed it wouldn’t work. They were at war. There were too many anti-apparition spells. It was almost impossible to apparate into the vicinity of villages, cities – pretty much every populated area.

And even if Sirius had been able to get out of London, where should he have apparated to? Sure as hell not Godric’s Hollow, protected by Dumbledore’s anti-apparition wards. It was completely impossible to apparate in a fifty kilometre radius around the village and even slightly further away you still risked getting splintered. It was to protect Harry, James and Lily but at the moment it only fed into Sirius desperation.

He ran out of the house where his motorbike was parked – his fastest way to get to Godric’s Hollow. He dropped all pretence of secrecy and immediately started flying. What did he care if some muggle saw him?

* * *

_ 1  
_

It took Sirius about fifty minutes to get there. He landed his motorbike directly across Lily and James' house and—and felt his blood turn to ice. The door was blasted away. _  
_

He jumped off and ran into the house, his wand out and ready, only able to cling to his desperate hope that he wasn’t too late that Voldemort hadn’t—

Sirius tripped and fell on his knees with a surprised shout.

And stared into James‘ unseeing eyes.

Sirius gasped and flung himself back, crashing into the wall behind him.

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. It was completely impossible.

That wasn’t James lying in the hallway, wearing that silly jumper with a stag embroidered to the front, Sirius had gotten him for his birthday, and that James wouldn’t ever let anyone but his closest family see him wearing. 

That wasn’t James wearing un-matching socks because he once again couldn’t be arsed to find a matching pair, or maybe because at this point he did it on purpose, because it was his trademark. 

That wasn’t James not even wearing fucking shoes. 

That wasn’t James with his glasses askew and the echo of his last feelings, his desperation and fear and anger still plastered on his face.

And that certainly wasn’t James who had, once again run ahead without a wand because the guy would probably one day forget his head if it wasn’t attached to his shoulders. It was second nature for Sirius to always have one eye out for James’ wand, since that fateful day they were discovered as the culprits of one of their pranks because James the git had left his wand in the goddamn Slytherin common room. 

That wasn’t James his best friends – his  brother  – lying unmoving on the floor.

That wasn’t James. 

Except that it was.

  
Sirius was shaking all over as he got on his knees again and scooted closer, like a little child. Without thinking he reached out and shook James.

“No No No Prongs!”   
A sob escaped Sirius.

“Come on, you have to wake up. Jamie, please-”

But it was no use.

James couldn’t stand up again. And so couldn’t Sirius. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, could barely breath and if his mind hadn’t been spinning so badly that would have been in itself enough to startle him out of his shock. Since when was Sirius response to _anything_ to go into a stupor? He should be jumping to his feed in rage should go to find Voldemort and kick his arse, no matter the consequences.

But the only thing that could get Sirius to move again was, when he realised that he had no idea what had happened to Harry and Lily.

Maybe—maybe they weren’t dead. Maybe they were still fighting. Just-just very silently.

Sirius jumped to his feet, clutching his wand. It seemed impossible to do so, but he went past James.

He went to find Harry and Lily.

He ran upstairs, without even knowing why he didn’t search the ground floor first.

A cold wind greeted him, blowing through the house, starting from a giant hole. Part of the wall and the roof over Harry’s room were completely blasted away.

And there, on the floor next to Harry’s crib lay Lily. It seemed like the explosion had completely avoided her and the crib. Everywhere else rubble and dust covered the floor, but Lily seemed perfectly fine. If it hadn’t been for her desperate expression, for the not yet dry tears, and for the green eyes that had once been beautiful and now seemed like they were eternally reflecting the killing curse, maybe it had seemed like she was sleeping. Now Sirius‘ mind, that couldn’t comprehend that someone looking so unhurt could be so dead, conjured what was missing and the dark red hair spread around her head looked like blood.

And Harry—Sirius wanted to look for Harry, he had the desperate hope that maybe the explosion had gotten Voldemort before he had gotten Harry, but he didn’t know where to go, because he could see the watch on Lily’s wrist, that her parents had gotten for her seventeenth birthday after she had vented that if it was a tradition for wizards it should be one for witches too, because a watch was way more useful than jewellery – her words, Sirius wouldn’t have said no to some good jewellery. Lily’s parents of course hadn’t got any clue about either tradition but James’ had taken them gladly to Diagon Alley to show them what kind of watches were typical for a coming-of-age watch.

They had been completely delighted that Lily had uncovered a problem of wizarding traditions they hadn’t even thought about, and that even though they had taken James on protests for muggleborn and werewolf and everything-you-could-think-about rights since before he could walk.

It had officially gotten Lily the place of dream-daughter-in-law.

Sirius stared at the watch and remembered how Lily had read the tales of Beedle the bard after she found out she was pregnant, because she wanted to know what wizard families usually read their children.

“If I had been that third brother, I’d just have told Death to fuck off and leave me alone. Go with him like equals my arse, after the dick plotted my siblings deaths.”

And they hadn’t really doubted her - that she would just tell Death himself to fuck off if he tried to get her before she wanted to.

But it seemed like it hadn’t worked after all.

Sirius closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He exhaled and opened his eyes. Finally he managed to turn his eyes away. He didn’t know where to start looking. Harry wasn’t in his room, but why else would Lily be up here if not to protect him? For one awful second Sirius mind skipped ahead and imagined that Voldemort had kidnapped Harry instead of killing him—but why would he, he didn’t know the “power he knows not” part after all—but what if he still did—

“Sirius”, he suddenly heard a familiar voice say, unusually calmly.

Sirius spun around, rising his wand and stared into Hagrid’s familiar face. Hagrid carrying a bundle of blankets. A bundle that didn’t quite hide black hair, and a face smeared with blood and tears and with green eyes that were still gleaming and warm and not even comparable to the eerie and killing-curse-like holes Lily’s where without the live behind them.

“Harry”, Sirius breathed and managed with pure willpower that his legs didn’t give in out of relieve. Instead he went over to Hagrid with a few fast steps.

“Harry”, he repeated because he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that he would still be able to say it as a name and not a memory.

“Harry is-”, Sirius stopped, because he could barely restrain himself from ripping Harry out of Hagrid’s arms, because Hagrid was doing it all wrong, Harry was way to old to be held like a newborn, his first steps were already old news after all, and because he looked so unbearably small in Hagrid’s huge arms, and because Sirius had to feel that Harry was still warm and breathing and unhurt and because he needed to protect him himself.

“Hagrid can I-please give him to me. I’m his godfather”, he choked out.

But instead of giving Harry away, Hagrid lay a hand on Sirius' shoulder.

“Come on, we get out of here. No good to stay too long at a place like this.”

_A place like this._ Because it was no longer a home and couldn’t ever be again. You didn’t live somewhere, once it turned into a _place like this_.

Hagrid gently pushed Sirius along to the door.

“Heard yeh comin'”, he said conversationally, obviously trying to keep Sirius from breaking down. “Thought I better get out of the way until I know who it is-”

Sirius didn’t answer. Hagrid’s words did nothing to keep Sirius from breaking down anyway. Instead he stared at the small face, trying to hold onto the fact that somehow Harry was still here.

“Harry-I can’t-how did Harry survive?”, he finally got out after a moment. Maybe if he knew what had happened it would be believable.

He knew that Harry hadn’t just been in another room while Lily and James fought Voldemort. He had a deep cut on his forehead—and even though it had already stopped bleeding, it felt like a fist was closing over Sirius guts when he looked at it. Harry was hurt. Harry was hurt and Sirius hated that he was because Harry was all that mattered and he had to protect him and he couldn’t stand the thought of anything harming Harry and Sirius still didn’t know how he had survived and it was impossible, Sirius couldn’t believe—

“Don’t know how-but the little tyke somehow got rid of you-know-who.”

The words barely registered with Sirius. He was overwhelmed already and so all he could focus on was the fact that Voldemort had been here. The mere thought of Voldemort somewhere near Harry made him feel such a strong mixture of desperation and anger that he felt like all he could do was sink to the floor and scream. And Sirius hated himself for it, because he wasn’t supposed to be someone who broke down, he was supposed to be the guy who took action. But today, for the first time in his life, he felt completely helpless. He didn’t know what to do or how to do it he only knew that he wanted to lay down and never stand up again and he knew that his thoughts were loud and spinning and screaming and all over the place and that the only think keeping him going was that Harry needed him.

But Harry was also the reason Sirius felt paranoid beyond reason and his mind was screaming at him.

_  
Keep Harry safe, get him somewhere safe, Harry can’t be hurt, Harry has to be safe, Harry is in danger, everywhere danger, Harry has to be safe- _

  
The screaming got louder with every second and had that part of Sirius taken over, he probably would have grabbed Harry and tried to hide somewhere in a bunker for the next thirty years.  
  


_ They’re dead, all dead, they’re gone, they’re dead, my fault, they’re dead-  
  
_

The thoughts were loud and screeching like a banshee. They came from the part of Sirius mind that just didn’t understand that Harry was alive, no matter how consistently Sirius stared at him and analysed every little movement, followed every breath.

Between the screeching, panicked, desperate thoughts spinning around Sirius’ head, there was a tiny part that still had some reason in it. Sirius desperately held onto that part. It was the part that kept him moving because he had to get Harry out of here and because Harry needed someone to look after him now that James—

With every second his hold of the sensible part slipped further away.

And so Sirius gaze never left Harry because he was scared one second without looking at him would be enough to send him over the edge.

_Harry is alive. Harry needs you. He has to get out of here. Somebody has to check this cut. Harry needs you. Harry is alive. _

Sirius repeated those words over and over again like a mantra.   
He took a deep breath.

“Give Harry to me, and then-I’ve got my motorbike and I get him to St. Mungo's, let them give him a once over-”

“Oh no, I can’t do that, Sirius.”   
Sirius stared at Hagrid.

_  
Keep it together. Harry needs you. Keep calm. _

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve got orders from Dumbledore himself. Bring Harry ter St. Mungo's and then directly to his new home, Dumbledore wants him ter live with his aunt-”

“With Petunia? No, that can’t—Give Harry to me, Hagrid, I’m his godfather, I’ll look after him-”

_Keep it together. Keep it together. Harry needs you-but does Harry need you? Dumbledore has other plans, you can’t possibly win against Dumbledore, Harry doesn’t need you—no, of course he does. _

The war in Sirius' head started to spread to the tiny sensible part.

“No Sirius”, Hagrid said. “Dumbledore wants Harry ter go to his relatives, I’ll get him there myself.”

Sirius desperation grew.

“I’m his godfather. Lily and James wanted me to look after him. Give him to me Hagrid, I can take care of him-”

Even in his own ears, Sirius sounded more panicked with every word.

“Dumbledore's orders, Sirius. I won’t go against Dumbledore’s orders.”

“Harry needs me! He doesn’t have anyone else anymore-Hagrid I’m his godfather, you can’t just ship him off to Petunia's, she and Lily don’t even get along-”

_Harry needs you. Keep it together, Harry needs you-_

Sirius’ grip on his sane thoughts grew more desperate.

“I’m sorry Sirius, but Dumbledore's orders-”

“How do you even think you’re going to get out of here? You can’t apparate and even if you could-not from here! And Harry's too little to take a portkey on his own and you know you can’t portkey somewhere with more than one person anymore-”

Hagrid actually seemed to hesitate for a moment. He muttered something about the floo. Sirius felt like he had solid footing again.

_You see? Harry needs you. Stay calm. Harry is still here. Harry needs you. _

Sirius took a deep breath.

“Please Hagrid, give Harry to me, I get him out of here-”

Hagrid regained his composure. He seemed even more determined than before.

“I can’t Sirius. Dumbledore's orders.”

“What do Dumbledore's orders have to do with anything?”, Sirius would have shouted, hadn’t it been for a dry sob taking over.

“Harry is Lily and James' son! And they wanted  me  to take care of him-and not for Dumbledore to give out orders!”

Sirius was sure that by now he looked completely pathetic and out of his mind. Otherwise Hagrid would have told him off for disrespecting Dumbledore for sure.

“It’s Dumbledore, Sirius. An' I won’t go against Dumbledore's orders.”

Sirius was losing and he knew it. But the thought of losing sight of Harry for even a second was unbearable and so he grasped for straws.

“Fine then! I’ll just go with you! Just tell me where Petunia lives and-”

“I can’t nobody is supposed ter know where exactly Harry lives, fer his safety. He isn’t supposed ter have any contact to anyone in the wizarding world until he is old enough fer Hogwarts-”

Hagrid kept talking but Sirius couldn’t hear him anymore.

The screeching in his head became fully overwhelming.

_They are going to take Harry away from me, Harry is gone, Harry is gone, gone—like Lily and James- _

Sirius could practically hear how his sanity hit the concrete and cracked open like a raw egg.

He couldn’t differentiate it anymore.

Harry, gone, out of his reach until he went to Hogwarts.

Or Harry gone, because he was as dead as Lily and James.

It was only a tiny moment where he didn’t know the difference but a tiny moment was all that was needed.

The raw pain and desperation he felt in that moment consumed his mind so thoroughly that any rationality that had still been left after seeing his best friend dead on the floor was pushed away and buried. He couldn’t grasp any clear thoughts. He tried. Tried to calm his mind. But it was spinning out of control in rapid speed and every clear thought slipped away before he could grasp it. It was like trying to catching smoke with bare hands.

From this moment on his memories went blank – there was only a swirling mess of fear and despair. He intensely remembered the feelings but what happened around him was barely more than fuzzy pictures. Sirius was nothing but a puzzle with missing pieces. His mind was nothing but a puzzle with missing pieces.   
He vaguely knew that he shouted at Hagrid to get Harry to safety.

He was sure to have given him his motorbike. Everybody knew that the floo wasn’t safe anymore and anyway he had to first find a house that was actually still fully connected to it.

* * *

Sirius remembered how Harry and Hagrid disappeared into the sky.

Because now Harry was really gone.

_ Gone, Gone, Gone._

And everything left was desperation and all-consuming pain. Too strong to bear. Not when there was nothing he could do anymore. No puzzle to solve. No one to fight. The danger was gone. Voldemort was dead. And Sirius had lost everything. He didn’t have anything to fight for anymore. He sunk to his knees.

  
Everything he could think about was that Lily and James were death and that he had just lost Harry.

Everything he could think about was that Harry was in danger and that the whole world was way too dangerous for Harry.

The War might be over, but now Sirius' mind was at war.

The part of him that was convinced to have lost Harry and the part that only could think about Harry's safety were fighting mercilessly for control.

There wasn’t space for anything else anymore.

He curled up and wanted nothing more than to scream-scream because of his pain and despair and because it felt like he wouldn’t ever feel anything else again, like somebody had ripped out all his organs and there was nothing holding Sirius together anymore and he was falling, falling, falling apart—

And suddenly silence.

The war came to a sudden end.

The two parts fighting for control had found common ground.

There was a shared enemy.

The person who had taken everything from him.

The person who was the greatest danger for everything that was left.

Sirius stopped shaking. He stood up.

He had a goal.

Sirius remembered this moment clearly. Remembered the moment he decided that Peter Pettigrew would die and that Sirius would be the one to do it.

But that he clearly remembered the moment didn’t mean his mind had been clear.

Had there anywhere been a spot for sensible thoughts between the pain, maybe he would have contacted Dumbledore or the aurors.

Maybe his stubbornness had gotten the better of him and he had marched up to Dumbledore to tell him exactly what he thought about shipping Harry off into the Muggle-world.

But Sirius' head wasn’t clear. And if your head was a mess like that you took the first real direction you found. So he stopped fighting to regain his senses and let the desperation take control.

His memories blurred again at this moment.

He vaguely remembered following Pettigrews traces. He wasn’t hard to find. Only a few detection charms.

He still needed more than a day until he caught up with him.

Only later would Sirius realise that it was all too easy. That he wanted to be found.

* * *

_ 2 _

  
One day and a half after he had started searching, Sirius found Pettigrew. He was in the middle of a residential street in London. Two days after Halloween – after the night Sirius had lost everything.

Muggles were everywhere around him, going to work, walking their kids to school, walking their dogs. And Pettigrew was in the middle of it, drawing attention to himself by wearing his cloak.

Peter's parents were both muggleborn. He knew exactly how to dress as a muggle. Sirius didn’t manage to bring this thought to a proper conclusion. Maybe he didn’t want to.

“PETTIGREW!”

Sirius didn’t bother to try and catch up with him. There were about twenty metres between them when Pettigrew spun around and Sirius stood, both feet solid to the ground in a duelling stance.

Pettigrew‘s expression seemed scared but Sirius knew him. He saw the slight twitching of his mouth. Why was he only know able to see through Pettigrew? Why hadn’t he managed, when it still mattered?

It didn’t need more than this slight twitch to tell Sirius that something was wrong. He didn’t care. He rose his wand, ready to get rid of Pettigrew once and for all—

“LILY AND JAMES, SIRIUS—HOW COULD YOU?”

Sirius stared at him, too startled to proceed for a moment.

He had guessed that it was a trap – that several death eaters would be waiting for him.

He had been ready to kill Pettigrew and then go down himself. But it wasn’t the kind of trap he had expected.

Sirius had walked onto a stage and Pettigrew had chosen it.

Hot anger flooded through him.

“I’m not here to play your games-”

“YOUR BEST FRIENDS! AFTER ALL JAMES DID FOR YOU, YOU TRADED THEM OUT! THEY’RE DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU!”

The words felt like they cut right through Sirius. He hadn’t known words cut hurt like they were physical wounds.

Yes it was his fault. But he hadn’t betrayed them.

Pettigrew was the traitor.

  
His anger became overwhelming and he was glad about it because even if only for one short moment, it overshadowed the pain. He welcomed it. Anger was way easier to bear.

He stared at Pettigrew, standing unabashed on the street, on his stage, a reinforcement spell on his voice so everyone would hear him.

Sirius had the curse on his lips and he didn’t feel any qualms. He knew how this would end. Peter wasn’t a duellist. Sirius would win.

He didn’t know why, after everything that had happened, he still expected Peter to play fair.

Why he thought the lives of innocent bystanders would mean anything to him.

Maybe part of Sirius hadn’t really believed that his friend had turned into a traitor after all.

He saw as Peter raised his wand. Saw how he waived it behind his back. Saw how he mouthed the incantation.

And it was too late.

The explosion would erupt around Pettigrew, in a deadly circle.

Sirius could have still cast the curse. He would have done so, were they alone in some empty field. He didn’t care anymore if he lived or died.

But Pettigrew had chosen the stage and he knew Sirius.

And he knew no matter how little Sirius cared if he survived, he would always care if innocent people survived.

_ ”Protego Maxima!” _

The shield spread over the street.

But Sirius wasn’t himself and the shield reflected that. It didn’t spread as far as he wanted it too. He managed to protect the muggles standing about ten meters around him. The ones on Pettigrews side didn’t stand a chance.

It wasn’t as strong as he wanted it to be.

Nobody under his shield died, but they still got blasted backwards, like Sirius himself, who hit the ground with enough force to knock the wind out of him. To knock the wand out of his hand.

The muggles screamed and ran away. Sirius stood up. Just in time to helplessly watch as Pettigrew sent another explosion right to the ground next to him, laying open the draining system, to watch as Pettigrew cut of his finger with a curse and turned into a rat.

His apparently magically altered cloak didn’t transfigure with him. It stayed back, drained with the blood of the muggles that had stood too close to him.

Pettigrew disappeared into the canalization with the other rats.

His cloak and his finger the only traces of him left.

Sirius mind was reeling.

His wand was nowhere in sight.

Pettigrew had successfully managed to disappear to a place Sirius couldn’t follow him to.

And all he could do was laugh. 

Peter of all people.

It had been Peter who deceived them all. 

Peter, playing the most elaborate prank of the century.

Peter, the one who was always there with a lie and an excuse to get them out of trouble with teachers.

Peter who had sought out friends who were more powerful than him, who could protect him.

How hadn’t he seen it?

Suddenly it seemed painfully obvious.

And Sirius could only think about the morbid irony this all held.

Peter of all people.

* * *

He was still kneeling on the ground, curled up and laughing hysterically when the hit-wizards arrived. He laughed when they detained him. And he laughed when they transported him away with a portkey.

When he sat in a temporary cell in the ministry his laughing turned into dry sobs. He thought he should be crying but he felt empty and the tears just wouldn’t come.

He was silent when he heard that Crouch had decided he would go straight to Azkaban because he wasn’t worthy of a trial.

He was sure he tried to explain to someone. But nobody listened. Nobody cared for his words. They were unwaveringly convinced that Sirius was a murderer and traitor while the real traitor sat cosily in some canalization.

Sirius started laughing again.

He laugh-sobbed while he was shipped off to Azkaban.

* * *

_9_

_I’m innocent,_ he thought bitterly. It was his first clear thought. He didn’t know what had made him do it. Maybe it had just been too much. His own pain was bad enough. But what the dementors did was too much. He guessed it had made him grasp for thoughts that weren’t pure pain.

Of course no happy thoughts – that was impossible. But thoughts unaffected by the dementors. The few thoughts that weren’t pain or desperation or the emptiness that once was happiness. Something had made Sirius search for the small path in between.

He clung to it tightly, like a safe line.

 _ I’m innocent and in Azkaban.  
_ _ But that doesn’t mean I don’t deserve it. _

They were still bitter and depressing thoughts because even the most basic facts felt depressing when you were under dementor influence and because in any case Sirius' situation wasn’t something unpainful.

But they still were his thoughts, things he remembered because he wanted to and not because the dementors pulled it out of his mind and made him relive it over and over and over again.

They were clear and Sirius used them to pull himself out of the screeching maelstrom of his pain and panic and desperation. It felt like coming up from underwater and he finally could think again.

_ Harry is safe. _

That was the only of his thoughts that gave him somewhat of a consolation. It was nowhere near happy because Harry deserved more than safety. He should be happy and he should know that he was loved every second of his live. He shouldn’t grow up, shut out from all magic. Sirius should be there and make sure of all that. But he wasn’t.

_I’m innocent._  
 _Harry is safe._  
 _Harry is far away from the rat._

Three thoughts.

Three facts he repeated over and over again as a mantra. They were the only thing that held him from going insane again in the following twelve years.


End file.
